Elon Musk put it simply: “#FreePavel.” For many, a hashtag of one billionaire calling for the release of another billionaire is hardly a compelling cause. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, 39, is neither a familiar nor sympathetic figure for most Americans. However, for free speech advocates, Durov’s arrest is a chilling escalation of global censors in using European laws to control speech on the Internet.
The press and pundits heralded the arrest and played up the allegations that Durov is under investigation for fraud and child abuse. Some might think from the headlines that Durov is himself being investigated for committing such crimes.
While we have not seen anything akin to a charging sheet, reports indicate that French authorities took the action because of his refusal to yield to their demands to censor content on his messaging app.
Others have been ecstatic that censors could soon come for Musk. Retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified in the Trump impeachment proceedings, declared “There’s a growing intolerance for platforming disinfo & malign influence & a growing appetite for accountability. Musk should be nervous.”
Social media is now the dominant form of communication between people. It surpasses telephones. There is, however, a major difference in how such communications are protected. There would be an outcry if AT&T broke into a telephone call to object to the views of the parties and cut off access to the telephone lines until they moderated their views.
The Europeans have been threatening to hold executives liable for how others use their sites. Imagine if a mobster used a telephone to do business and the FBI arrested the CEO of AT&T.
The implication of this case goes far beyond Durov. Social media sites allow large numbers of people to communicate and to associate. They share values or viewpoints, including some that most of us find offensive or repulsive. However, free speech should protect the right of people to associate so long as they do not commit crimes.
Under free speech principles, those crimes should not include viewpoints or ideology. If individuals are engaging in child pornography or human trafficking, they should be arrested. That is conduct, not just speech.
While the media emphasizes the allegations that there are people engaged in fraud or child porn, officials add that Durov has failed to remove viewpoints that they consider extreme or offensive. French officials have cited the failure to engage in greater “content moderation,” the euphemism of censorship.
We have been discussing how countries like France and the United Kingdom have been ramping up anti-free speech crackdowns. Recently, the European Union threatened Musk that he could be charged if he did not censor political speech in this election, including any information deemed by the EU to be false in his interview with Donald Trump.
European Commissioner for Internal Markets and Services Thierry Breton issued a threatening message to Musk, “We are monitoring the potential risks in the EU associated with the dissemination of content that may incite violence, hate and racism in conjunction with major political — or societal — events around the world, including debates and interviews in the context of elections.”
The law behind these threats is the Digital Services Act. The act bars speech that is viewed as “disinformation” or “incitement.” European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager celebrated its passage by declaring that it is “not a slogan anymore, that what is illegal offline should also be seen and dealt with as illegal online. Now it is a real thing. Democracy’s back.”
In addition to Musk, Robert Kennedy Jr. has denounced the arrest.
This action is not due to the encryption capacity or child porn rationales. European officials have been making the same threats against other sites over the failure to censor views that they deem unacceptable.
Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski wrote “France has threatened Rumble, and now they have crossed a red line by arresting Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov, reportedly for not censoring speech.”
Telegram has over 900 million users and allows large groups of people to communicate across different channels. The New York Times reported that officials have targeted the company for its failure, among other things, in allowing “far-right extremist groups” to use the app.
In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss the use of the DSA to regulate speech on a global scale. The effort has been encouraged by some Democratic leaders.
After Elon Musk bought Twitter and dismantled most of the company’s censorship program, many on the left went bonkers. That fury only increased when Musk released the “Twitter files,” confirming the long-denied coordination and support by the government in targeting and suppressing speech.
In response, Hillary Clinton and other Democratic figures turned to Europe and called upon them to use their Digital Services Act to force censorship against Americans.
The EU immediately responded by threatening Musk with confiscatory penalties against not just his company but himself. He would have to resume massive censorship or else face ruin.
Notably, Durov left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with Kremlin demands to shut down opposition groups on his VK social network. He later left VK and co-founded Telegram.
European regulators have objected to what they view as misinformation on Telegram about the Ukraine war. Yet, Telegram is also a popular source for Russians to get unfiltered information on the war. It allows them to evade Russian censors due to its encryption capacity.
Americans should not be deceived or distracted by the Durov case. The underlying claim of authority by these officials will impact all users of social media. They are making the long anticipated move to target CEOs to get them to yield as did the executives at sites like Facebook. The fear is that, once these executives are forced into cringing obedience, Europe can regulate speech on a global level.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster).
I have to laugh every time someone comments about Mr. Turley’s relation to Fox News network. So, what if he appears on their programming? I do watch Fox as I am able to learn both sides of an argument. I have watched the other Networks, and it seems all their rage is only over one person…Donald Trump. Can’t learn much from a group of angry people.
Dear Prof Turley,
It must have been French Inspector Clouseau who nabbed Pavel on a ‘refueling’ stop over .. . and holds him as a ‘flight risk’!
It’s a big deal with far-reaching implications. I get far more useful, accurate and informed information from Telegram ‘milblogs’ (i.e. military bloggers) about Ukraine, than the NYT and The Institute for the Study of War (aka ISW) put together.
This is the 21st century. The EU may shut down Telegram.. . but a thousand more will take its place.
For all practical purposes, The Internet became self-aware Dec. 3, 1974.
[ The term “internet” was reflected in the first RFC published on the TCP protocol (RFC 675:[116] Internet Transmission Control Program, December 1974) as a short form of internetworking, when the two terms were used interchangeably. In general, an internet was a collection of networks linked by a common protocol. In the time period when the ARPANET was connected to the newly formed NSFNET project in the late 1980s, the term was used as the name of the network, Internet, being the large and global TCP/IP network.]
The Genie is out of the bottle, we all have something different in common Protocol.
I don’t see how [they] can put it back in the bottle, notwithstanding the huge rewards and global economies of scale for those willing and able to try. .. nothing succeeds like success.
*#FreePavel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg_4z2adv6Q
“I don’t see how [they] can put it back in the bottle”
Most people visualize the internet (if they bother to try to visualize it at all) as a massive network of peer-to-peer connections. That would make it difficult indeed to, as you say, “put back in the bottle”. The reality is a architectural hierarchy that repetitively aggregates levels of nodes and connections, creating an even more limited number of choke points. The traffic through each choke point is subject to constant, intense scrutiny by at least one, typically many, state actors. That does not mean that maintaining secure, private communications is impossible, but it does mean that doing so consistently, over any period of time, is a serious challenge that must be acknowledged, and continually addressed.
Buy servers and improve your encryption.
“Buy servers and improve your encryption.”
The point I was trying to make is that there is no viable “set it, and forget it” option. Measures to achieve security and privacy should be taken that are proportionate to a rational risk evaluation. Any measure put in place must periodically be examined for new compromises and exploits.
There is no privacy on the internet.
Even now as I type from a university office, via a univeristy super fast IP server, with high walls in place, it is unwise of me to think anything I type is now, or after I hit “reply”, will be private.
Want privacy? Unplug from the internet.
Dear Mr. Turley, when Mr. Musk purchased Twitter, he threw the Left into a tailspin. Even after evidence was presented to Congress, the Democrats attacked the journalist who investigated the matter on whether or not the Government told Twitter bosses what to censor. So, the next best thing to do was to turn to hyper-sensitive Europe and demand they censor Telegram. Unless the common folk speak up to their government officials, I do not have much hope here. The noose of governmental control is growing tighter around our collective necks.
The noose of governmental control is growing tighter around our collective necks.
This video details how our regime is tightening that noose.
https://bonginoreport.com/videos/telegram-ceo-arrested-heres-who-is-really-behind-it-ep-29
I’ve said it many times, and here it is again: I don’t know what we do when there is a global cabal trying to take control of the planet, one that will stop at literally nothing to hold on to power, and one that with our modern DNC in power can impose whatever it pleases.
Please defend our Constitution in November. Free speech is one thing, and you’d better believe it’s the most important thing, but our sovereignty is entirely another. You are either voting for sanity or oblivion. Do we really have to start shooting one another? This goes beyond party inclination or prejudice. For Pete’s sake, see what is on the line here in America, we don’t have to down this road. We can be the *positive* object lesson in the midst of this madness.
This is quite literally Stasi level sheet. Is everyone who dares to think for themselves going to end up a Snowden? Madness. Pure madness.
Whatever your affiliation, if you aren’t voting vehemently against the dems this November . . . sigh. Just, sigh.
James,
Well said.
The Democrat party has become the party of censorship.
Vote straight GOP down ballot.
Democrats are fighting a civil war with the globalist against the WEST
Everyone else is funding them!
The digital world gives us immense freedom and content and chaos also. But we had that same thing even before the digital world descended upon us. The printing press changed humanity. The phone and telegraph changed it some more and the digital world has taken us even further. There were always those who wanted to suppress ideas and those who wanted full freedom to express their ideas. The only thing that has changed is degree. I still would prefer chaos over governmental censorship or even non governmental censorship.
We have to be free to associate and communicate or we will stagnate and make no progress. Speech and communication is essential to the human condition. Suppression just reduces us to the level of meaningless pets or drones (as in non thinking and otherwise useless. Not talking AI Directed drones) One has to be specific, correct?
* Yes, you are supposed to stagnate and make no progress. Correct.
It seems counter-productive to force a platform to censor thoughts about perceived illegal actions, rather than use the platform as another tool to identify and weed out those actually conducting the illegal activities. Hate speech is just that, speech. It’s not action, which should be the basis for criminal charges. If the military were to conduct national defense with the same policy as our censorship regime is taking law enforcement, we’d be actively engaged in war with every country that hates our own. Fortunately they have rules of engagement that authorizes a military response to actions and not rhetoric.
“It seems counter-productive to force a platform to censor thoughts about perceived illegal actions, rather than use the platform as another tool to identify and weed out those actually conducting the illegal activities.”
It’s only counter-productive if you believe that the actual goal of TPTB is to stop the illegal activity. If their goal is rather to intimidate and/or prevent free speech of any kind, it is perfectly sensible.
If their goal is rather to intimidate and/or prevent free speech of any kind, it is perfectly sensible.
Yes Ragnar, that was the logical conclusion I chose to leave unsaid.
“[A] hashtag of one billionaire calling for the release of another billionaire is hardly a compelling cause.” (JT)
You might want to consider the connection between that (unjust) mindset and Durov’s (unjust) arrest.
We need every freedom loving person to sign up for Telegram and other, similar products (ie.Signal) and start sending hundreds of messages – Bible verses, corny jokes, Aunt Sofie’s cookie recipes – and make the censors and the cryptographers at NSA work overtime. If/when an FBI agent shows up at your door for a ‘knock and talk,’ politely recite the First Amendment before ordering them off your property.
Or charge them a “solicitation fee”. I recommend $100 for every 15 minutes, payable in cash, in advance, every 15 minutes.
Not easy to do if they show up with a two dozen machine gun armed swat team who after batter ramming through your door, hand cuff you and the wife in your jamies, and could care less if your innocent or not, so long as they accomplish the perp walk for the cameras as instructed.
I watch Dragnet reruns also and I too yearn for the old days when there was clarity, or at least we thought so…
“Not easy to do if they show up with a two dozen machine gun armed swat team who after batter ramming through your door, hand cuff you and the wife in your jamies, and could care less if your innocent or not, so long as they accomplish the perp walk for the cameras as instructed.”
You’d be lucky if that is all that happened to you. If they do a no-knock in the middle of the night, and you defend yourself, thinking that you are the victim of a gang of intruding armed thugs (of the non-government variety, that is) they’d just slaughter you on the spot, like they did Little Rock Airport administrator Bryan Malinowski last March
http://www.zerohedge.com/political/no-charges-deadly-atf-arkansas-home-raid
That was for an alleged firearms violation, but I see no guard rails preventing this kind of tactic being employed for speech violations in the not far distant future if we continue on the road we have taken. It appears to me that The Authoritae are just working their way up the Bill of Rights list. Malinowski was exercising his 2A rights, by that rationale, 1A immediately follows.
Jeff: Love it.
AND, use Telegram to criticize (substantively as opinion) FBI neutrality and tactics.
“We need every freedom loving person to sign up for Telegram and other, similar products (ie.Signal) and start sending hundreds of messages”
I need to revisit my sources, but I recall seeing past allegations that Signal has long been compromised by, and possibly is itself a tool, of the Deep State. (NSA. etc.) Of course, I have seen similar allegations about Tor. I’m not claiming that either technology is compromised, but I am strongly suggesting that unqualified trust in any such tech reflects poor judgement. Do at least a little research to qualify your assumptions before committing to an allegedly secure and private protocol or system. Leaps of faith in those domains may be followed by long falls. Bruce Schneier is one knowledgeable source of information on these subjects, but Bruce is in some respects a Deep State tool himself, so supplementing his viewpoints from other sources and perspectives is very much a good idea.
* let’s tell the postal service to police the mail. We’re busy.
What’s not being discussed is how advancing and future technology might alter our perception of what is considered invasive. Direct human intervention is almost always considered an invasion of privacy. Technology blurs that line. At one time, print opinion pieces were “reviewed” and countered by other print opinion pieces. All had a chance to review and opine. Today, bots are reviewing in near real-time. Digital media can be suppressed or deleted entirely. AI can actively screen online posts as they are posted. What will happen when technology can screen our phone calls in real time? The more we become adapted and reliant on technology, the more we are accepting of such. We are mid-way long an invasive technology spectrum ending in the 2002 movie Minority Report. Privacy must be defined at the most basic level, such that it can, as best as possible and with foresight, remain valid against a variety of unimagined challenges.
Ron, your comment is thought-provoking; I thank you for that.
Yet, I consider the notion of one political ideology controlling and manipulating communication en masse, more dangerous than the idea of invasive technology. Still, (and I infer that you were somewhat intimating the same), while we can turn on or shut off our relation with external sources of communication, if we engage, and the message is always the same, what do we fall back upon? Ergo, your first sentence could also read, “What’s not being discussed is how advancing and future technology might alter our perception of what is considered real or true.
(Ron, on a lighter note, “I think, therefore I am.” (Was that Kierkegaard? Descartes? can’t remember.) Anyway, under your scenario, it becomes, “I think a tree fell in the forest, but no one is confirming it, and my message to notify others has been deleted. Oh oh. Therefore, I am not.”
That would suite the globalists just fine!
“I think, therefore I am.”
Descartes.
He developed analytical geometry and wanted to put philosophy on a footing similar to Euclidean geometry but needed an unquestionable starting point.
He finally came up with “I think therefore I am.”
Neat start but it went sideways after that.
Young: THanks!
p.s. quick OT thought. I think it was Descartes who wrote about the virtues of a familiar winding path vs. an AB or AC direct path? I remember loving its logic, but getting too old to remember the source/origin. If you know, just answer in a word or two so Ido not lead everyone on a winding OT thread, haha
so apparently there are NO Democrats or Globalists?
Moody Blues 🙂 Just kidding. Credit seems to be given to Descartes: “Cogito, ergo sum”.
Je pense, que la même chose.
Ragnar D: Now that was funny, you bright little star.
Lin…Key word is “perception”. My reality and my truth are my own and independent of yours or anyone else’s. Which is why there can be no censorship of thought or opinion.
No objection to that basic premise.
However, I suffer to connect what you just said to my comment to which you responded?
I did not think Ron (if that is you as anonymous) was referring to existential opinion. My inference was that his/your comment pertains to the external communication and exchange of thought or opinion, or censorship/silencing thereof:
As Ron says, “Today, bots are reviewing in near real-time. Digital media can be suppressed or deleted entirely. AI can actively screen online posts as they are posted. What will happen when technology can screen our phone calls in real time?”
Lin, I’m sorry but I don’t know. I should, but I don’t. But it does sound a little like Robert Frost to me.
“The Road Not Taken” is a narrative poem by Robert Frost, first published in the August 1915 issue of the Atlantic Monthly,[1] and later published as the first poem in the 1916 poetry collection,” That from wikipedia.
Young:: Took me over an hour, but I found it! As soon as I “searched” his name and “path,” I saw the words, “Discourse on Method” which cried out from the hollows of my brain:
“Large bodies, if once overthrown, are with great difficulty set up again, or even kept erect when once seriously shaken, and the fall of such is always disastrous. Then if there are any imperfections in the constitutions of states (and that many such exist the diversity of constitutions is alone sufficient to assure us), custom has without doubt materially smoothed their inconveniences, and has even managed to steer altogether clear of, or insensibly corrected a number which sagacity could not have provided against with equal effect; and, in fine, the defects are almost always more tolerable than the change necessary for their removal; in the same manner that highways which wind among mountains, by being much frequented, become gradually so smooth and commodious, that it is much better to follow them than to seek a straighter path by climbing over the tops of rocks and descending to the bottoms of precipices.”
Lin, Thank you for that!
No, thank YOU for reading and responding. I bet it’s been @20-25 years since I thought of that.
I think at least 50 years since I read Discourse on Method. Someone wrote that he shoved his prejudices out the door and let them in again by the window. Still, he is a great man and his writings stir many thoughts.
* These huge postal services like Telegram and X do a lot of business. The EU wants these services to investigate patrons themselves?
How do the hard mail postal services function? Ted Kocynsky got his bombs through but phone calls? Really? Phone calls are just conversation without conduct. The law requires conduct? Body guards do such work in possible attacks and bad conduct that MAY happen.
It’s reasonable to have some effort in place. No pictures of children? For the EU to thrust this responsibility completely upon providers seems excessive.
Btw, when you are put on hold via telephone and a message informs you this call may be recorded it is being recorded while you wait. Play Chopin in the background. Surveillance is going on by all of those little gadgets.
Disruptive innovation it’s called. A phone is a phone and a letter is a letter.
No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.
–Plato–
Turley shows his inherent fan boy relationship with the idea that negligence has no legal bearing. There is, indeed, a problem with social media outlets willingly profiting off of easily defined mis and disinformation.
But Turley works for fox so that explains that.
Just another day closer to another trump loss with his accompanying legal, and illegal efforts to overturn reality. Crowning achievement of this hired SCOTUS??? To overturn the ’24 election.
And a pleasant Sieg Heil to you, sir.
Lol.
We all know what the role of this SCOTUS is. Only question left to answer is whether they’ll outright steal the election in addition to butchering presidential immunity.
This ignorant anon wants us to ignore history again. Same SCOTUS as was seated in 2020, less Jackson.
Get a grip.
Great point!
A much more centrist SCOTUS put its thumb on the scale and handed Bush Jr the oval office in 2000. This much more radical right wing court wouldn’t have a problem with overthrowing this election.
What your argument neglects is what’s been done at the state level with election deniers becoming formal election officials. They’ll get a case to the SCOTUS to tee them up for election reversal…, and they’ll take the opportunity.
“This much more radical right wing court wouldn’t have a problem with overthrowing this election.”
Just like 2020, right?
Get a grip.
What that court in ’20 didn’t have is systemized corruption set in place at the election official/state level so a case couldn’t be teed up for the SCOTUS in time. Not the case now. Stay current, it’ll keep you from saying really foolish things.
What your argument neglects is that you have NO CHANCE of winning to begin with. HISTORY shows us that Trump has the electoral advantage at anything below an 8% nationwide dem lead. Harris is 6.5% below that, which is why she is behind in 5 out of 7 battlegrounds. Likely to remain unchanged if she keeps her mouth shut, and likely to tank if she opens it.
Poll denier.
Speaking of poll denial, the polls coming out this week show Harris tied, ahead or well within every margin of error in the battlegrounds. Combine that with the knowledge polling up to about two weeks before election day are only good for determining trend. And Harris is coming in at plus 7 on trump nationally with her postconvention bump in most recent polling. Harris has come from seven down to seven up in a month. Big trend reversal going against trump in other words…
Add to that how out of date polling is in being accurate predictively.
And thank you for pointing out just how fatally flawed the electoral college is. That unfair imbalance is, and has been, the only way R’s can win the Oval office in the last twenty years.
I’d feel good if I were on the Harris campaign right about now though.
Funny because Harris’s campaign isnt feeling to good, according to Politico.
Maybe if you were current you’d know that.
Unfair lol. Spoken like a true spastic who doesnt know what a Union of Sovereign States is.
Get a grip. And a civics lesson.
Plus 7 lmao what an idiot.
Get ready to lose, Georgia cracker. You heard it here first. You can thank me later.
“HISTORY shows us that Trump has the electoral advantage”
It will be “interesting” to see what those who would usurp the voters and steal this election for Harris by any means necessary might resort to if the voters choose Trump by a decisive margin in November, which I consider to be somewhat likely. Will they grudgingly accept the results, and go grumbling off to do their best to sabotage his Presidency, or will they indulge in outright obstruction and insurrection of the very kind that they have unceasingly accused Trump of since 2021?
And the stat to watch for is not 8% polling, since polling is so flawed.
The thing to keep your eye on is how much D’s need to win the popular vote by…
They will, as in every presidential election in recent decades proves, but they have to win the popular vote by about 3% to make up for the strategic unfairness of the electoral college.
Wrong.
Unfair to democrats???
Lmao there was no democrat party when the electoral college was established.
Unfair to the hive mentality. Boo fvcking hoo.
You’re correct, political parties weren’t what they are now back then. The EC was established to protect the influence of slave owners from out voted. Your angst is entertaining during this trump implosion. Party on.
“they have to win the popular vote by about 3% to make up for the strategic unfairness of the electoral college”
The electoral college is eminently FAIR. It’s purpose is to prevent mob rule. And your unsupported claim is based on statistical analysis, which is the least reliable information category (i.e. “lies, damned lies, and statistics”). As the political infrastructure changes (and it is currently crumbling) such assumptions lose what little validity they may have previously had. In any state that remains reliably blue, Harris could win 100% of the popular vote without affecting the electoral result, the converse is true for Trump in states that remain reliably red.
“Democracy the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob conditions.” – H. L. Mencken
Nice Menken quote….
But it doesn’t change the fact the EC was established to protect the interests of slave owners.
No matter what you tell yourself, establishing a system that effectively weights rural votes more than other votes is eminently UNfair.
Your skill in developing ad hominem arguments may qualify you for politics yourself.
Apparently, a job resume qualifies as ad hom these days?
Who is the judge, jury and executioner on what is considered dis or mis information? Shouldn’t that be the reader? You assume ALL people are stupid and believe whatever is printed.
No, I assume that there is true information, false information, and then a combination of both. Add to that the fact information can be properly vetted and verified.
And no, I don’t believe you’re stupid and believe everything you read. Perhaps you’re just deluded and not well read.
If individual nations, or blocs of nations (ie. EU) can impose their censorship laws internationally, how can the global social media companies ever hope to simultaneously follow the likely contradictory free speech/censorship laws of the USA, EU, China, Russia, Saudia Arabia, Iran, India, Pakistan, Brazil, etc. ?
Whoever is engineering the destruction of Western Civilization is doing a pretty good job of it.
At dinner with friends who travel a lot we discovered that we all had written off France and England as travel destinations though all had been there before and enjoyed it.
There were many reasons for that decision but among the top were the invasion of barbarians and the move to Soviet style governing. One ‘wrong’ word or thought and you are on the way to jail: one wrong turn and you risk getting a knife in your guts. Defend yourself or say something bad about your attacker–if you survive–and it’s jail again.
One way or the other trouble is coming and we don’t want to be there when it does.
As I was saying:
Notting Hill chaos and two tier policing.
https://youtu.be/JU6Yko88wsU?si=4XiEZaNpGxGSujeB
Young,
And there was another stabbing in Germany, at the “Festival of Diversity.” Three dead, eight wounded. Apparently the guy had ties to the Islamic State terrorist group. The “festival” was supposed to go on all weekend, but was canceled.
Upstate-
Thanks! Nothing says DIVERSITY FESTIVAL like a few stabbings.
Germany plans to crack down on knives.
The problem isn’t knives but the barbarians in their midst, particularly those of a special religion.
Odd that one seldom sees Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus or Christians doing these attacks. Instead their role is as victims while the police stand by whistling and scratching their behinds, pretending to be oblivious.
If these arrests continue, I for see a War coming!
When Democrats claim they are fighting for democracy, they are lying. They are the ones who want censorship. They are the ones who are against women’s rights. They are the ones against parents rights. They are the ones who wanted and in many cases did, defund the police. They are the ones who want no cash bail, and put criminals back on the streets. They are the ones who want an open border, letting in millions of illegals who assault, rape and murder young women and even girls.
* Yes, the wolves are free and roaming to censor the masses. Be afraid and stay inside and only go out with another if you dare. Cover up girls and women because the wolves are roaming.
Computers and phones today are simply telephones, typewriters, postal service, libraries rolled into one and not new. Investigators still need a FISA warrant don’t they?
“Computers and phones today are simply telephones, typewriters, postal service, libraries rolled into one and not new. Investigators still need a FISA warrant don’t they?”
eagrding FISA warrants: Yes, except for the Section 702 warrantless search exception, which is huge, and with near certainty, widely abused by the Deep State. In short, NO!
Regarding the ubiquity of internet services in replacing the disparate communications of the past, maybe the thought that this was the police state plan all along: to consolidate in order to control, should be seriously entertained.
It became necessary for them to destroy democracy to save it.
You are completely correct my friend!! I just posted a comment about how much the United Kingdom and Europe has changed. Over a period of 30 years I traveled in and out of so many places in Europe. You might find my comment, which is at the top, interesting. Also, if you want to keep up with what is happening in Europe, then you need to check out, Peter Sweden blog over on Substack.
https://substack.com/@petersweden Also, his beautiful Swedish wife, which is where he’s from, has a blog on the Substack, to art that she does in so many places throughout Europe. Needless to say, they travel quite a bit. Young Christian, pretty well healed and, deeply conservative. if you follow him, you will come to learn pretty quickly, that the reason him and his beautiful Swedish wife, Are the way they are????
you will come to learn, because he puts it on his blog. Both of them was raised in a very loving Swedish . With 2 parents in the house, and both of them had stay at home mothers. They met at a private Christian school over here in the United States. In Pensacola, Florida. https://www.pensacolachristianacademy.com/ Both of them went to school here. From 8th to 12th grade……
Then they started going to college at the Academy. They had a beach wedding over on Pensacola Beach. And it was estimated that over 3000 people from our surrounding community turned out for the wedding on the beach. I have no idea how many people brought covered dishes!!
France protects free speech of select groups when they deride people with religious values, morals, and a sense of decency vis a vis Paris Olympics opening ceremony & mockery of Jesus Christ’s Last Supper. This from the country that gave us the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. Jean Jacque Rousseau, Frédéric Bastiat and René Descartes would reject France’s lurching Left
This all brings to my mind the words of Pope Francis in his speech to the European Parliament ten years ago. Angela Merkel, of course, was offended. LOL
Pope Francis calls Europe an ‘elderly and haggard’ grandmother
“We encounter a general impression of weariness and ageing, of a Europe that is now a grandmother, no longer fertile and vibrant……The great ideals which once inspired Europe seem to have lost their attraction, only to be replaced by the bureaucratic technicalities of its institutions”
https://www.ft.com/content/ec0503e0-749d-11e4-b30b-00144feabdc0
NB: Pensacola Beach is a lovely beach. I trained at AOCS at NAS Pensacola in 1980s. Watching the Blue Angels practice flight maneuvers up/down the PNS beach coast was mind blowing.
Freedom is on the ballot.
Civil rights are on the ballot.
Pavel will have to buy his way out.
What does that mean?
Hear, hear!
The problem may not be free speech. The technology of sowing confusion and misunderstanding is so well understood by those who are gaining certain levels of control for their political beliefs, which appears to be an aggregation of pro-war, pro-wokeist, and pro medical intervention beliefs.
What is the problem? In accurate speech. Free speech has always falsified narratives to the point of war. Jefferson turned George III into a tyrant; in fact, the parlimentarians-democracists were much more tyrranical. So is free speech a virtue? What about mandating full and complete accuracy? And what about getting rid of party system as George Washington saw as a serious problem of creating cliques.
Very antithetical to your beliefs heretofore, but when you stare at “free speech” in the mirror-it is actually so totally misused, that it allows for an incredibly false narrative that promotes all of the things I mentioned; war, wokeism and false medical interventions.
Ahhh, but that’s the billion $ question. WHO decides what is “full and complete accuracy” and WHO watches the watchers….
Let us decide what we believe. Nobody made you or anyone one else the arbiter of truth. Perhaps it is misused but it is better to err on the side of freedom than censorship.
You’re confusing speech with conduct. Sometimes the line is not always clear. It seems as if you want to punish the conduct of platforms for not doing what the federal government cannot. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s still government censorship. Call it for what it is
Anonymous8:27AM-I think your premise is wrong. The colonists knew damn well who their foe was and it was Parliament. They did appeal to the king to ask for his intercession (if he has any such power). The colonists were British subjects and had fought in multiple wars for the UK. They knew the UK form of government.
When the King failed to act then he became part of the opposition. It was the King who talked about giving the colonists a “bloody punch in the face” (paraphrase) to bring them around. Thomas Jefferson had little to do with it. He just put it to pen. Quite eloquently.
Of course the King never thought George Washington would relinquish command of the American Forces and was stunned when he did so.
The King made his own bed. The colonists and parliament were talking past each other in many cases. The King could have bridged the gap but failed to do so. They were all his subjects> It was time to part company.
When Parliament gained significant power in Britain, British subjects living on their Island depended on the King to intercede with Parliamentary decisions, so it was not unusual for American subjects to do the same.